Many contemporary electronic devices offer virtual assistant services to perform various tasks in response to spoken user inputs. In some circumstances, multiple electronic devices having virtual assistant services may concurrently operate in a shared environment. As a result, a user input may cause each of the multiple electronic devices to respond when the user input contains a trigger phrase or command recognized by each of the virtual assistant services on the electronic devices. This in turn may result in a confusing experience for the user, as multiple electronic devices may simultaneously begin to listen and/or prompt for additional input. Further, the multiple electronic devices may perform duplicative or conflicting operations based on the same user input.
Additionally, a user input can identify one or more particular electronic devices to perform a task. For example, the user may issue a command to a virtual assistant service in order to remotely control home electronic devices by referring to the devices by location (“in my living room”), by a device type (“on my TV”), or by a type of task the device needs to perform (“play the Beatles”). However, the user input, by itself, often does not provide sufficient information for the virtual assistant service to identify, control, and/or manage the electronic devices.